


Hate To See You Leave (Love To Watch You Go)

by angularmomentum



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Attempted Murder, Comedy, Dubious Consent, Hunting, M/M, Misunderstandings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-05-27 10:14:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15022409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angularmomentum/pseuds/angularmomentum
Summary: Nicklas hadn't had many regrets about leaving the Navy, on the whole. Fewer people shouted at him on merchant ships, and the pay was slightly better, though the company was worse. Most importantly, nobody had torpedoed his ship out from under him in years, which made running aground on an unmarked shoal and the damn thing going down like a stone something of a shock.





	Hate To See You Leave (Love To Watch You Go)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kingsoftheimpossible](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingsoftheimpossible/gifts).



> In honour of Wade on the occasion of their birth, a short fiction about meeting your soulmate in unlikely circumstances.
> 
> Thanks always to wade and jolach for reading this over ENDLESSLY, and again for good measure! Love and appreciate you both.
> 
> If you are at all confused by the tags, please, PLEASE read the endnotes for warnings.

-

An Arrival

-

Sasha was reading by the fire and enjoying the storm when Zhenya rudely interrupted him. Of course, being as Zhenya was generally rude, that part was not such a surprise, but by this hour he was often blind drunk and fast asleep, so Sasha forgave himself for his shock.

Zhenya dumped the heap of sodden fabric and hair he was carrying right in the Persian carpet, shaking the rain off himself like a great hound.

“Explain yourself,” Sasha said, turning a page with exaggerated care.

“I think this one is still alive,” Zhenya nudged his find with one enormous foot. “More or less.”

The heap flipped a hand out in his direction, weakly swatting away the intrusion, before it rolled towards Sasha, revealing a firelit glimpse of very pale skin and a mass of lank hair before vomiting a litre of seawater onto the intricate patterning of the rug.

“Definitely alive,” Sasha confirmed. “Was he the only one?”

“I don't know, he made it all the way to the garden, you think I was out in this for fun?”

Sasha peered curiously at the shipwrecked man, watching his barrel chest rise and fall jerkily under his waterlogged clothes. Sasha had no impression of a face, just great wild eyes and the subsequent hacking sound he made when it turned out he wasn't done vomiting. “Big,” he observed.

“I'm going to bed,” Zhenya threatened.

Their half-drowned guest wheezed, trying to get to all fours but only making it onto his belly.

“Very big.” Sasha put his book down. “Zhenya—”

“I said I was going to bed.”

“See our guest to the bath,” Sasha continued, ignoring him. “He looks cold.”

The shipwrecked man made an incredulous noise, trying to struggle out of Zhenya’s reach, but it was Sasha he was glaring at, bloodshot green eyes wide in his sea-swollen face. Interesting. There was no point in struggling, as Zhenya had the reach of a giant and the temperament of a troll, but Sasha did enjoy the sound he made when Zhenya threw him over his shoulder. It sounded like a threat. Delightful.

-

Nicklas hadn't had many regrets about leaving the Navy, on the whole. Fewer people shouted at him on merchant ships, and the pay was slightly better, though the company was worse. Most importantly, nobody had torpedoed his ship out from under him in years, which made running aground on an unmarked shoal and the damn thing going down like a stone something of a shock.

Of course life being what it was, the captain resigning, hauling off to a lifeboat and promoting him on the spot was definitely the worst part, until he hit the water.

Still. He could thank the Navy for teaching him to swim, that was something.

-

The Russian giant stripped him with the kind of grumbling dispassion Nicklas had thought he'd left behind with Naval medics and tossed him bodily into a great brass bathtub, keeping him there with one enormous hand while it filled with warm water.

If Nicklas had gained back the rest of his breath it would have been closer to a fair fight, but all that ended up happening was a vigorous scrubbing and an incomprehensible set of commands Nicklas was far too weak after miles of swimming to argue with.

Maybe he was dead and the huge four-post bed he was thrown into like a rag doll was heaven. Maybe the eyes staring at him from every wall were living and not glass, row upon row of trophies watching him succumb to sleep.

“That is the creepiest thing I have ever seen,” he offered them, just in case they were listening, before he lost his grip on consciousness.

-

The morning after the storm dawned bright and clear and Nicklas was absolutely certain he was dreaming. The bed was obscenely comfortable, the room was filled with gauzy light filtering through elegant, slightly salt-stained curtains, and a breeze wafted gently over his skin from a half-opened window, revealing the seductive quiet of a house near the sea.

Nicklas closed his eyes and opened them again, sure he would forget some detail and the dream would dispense with it, but when he opened them again the room was still there, painted a calming blue and decorated wall to wall with the staring heads of dead animals, glass eyes fixed towards the bed in eternal scrutiny.

Nicklas pulled the blankets back up over his chest.

It took him a moment to decide to get up, but he found the task more difficult than he thought. The first hint of movement shocked him back to nausea, and a thirst so powerful he almost gagged again overtook him the instant he opened his mouth to curse the pain of sitting.

So he had been in the water.

He turned at the creak of the door, determined to put up more of a fight than he had last night if anyone tried to touch him.

It was the giant again, thinner in the daylight, more a stretched-out version of a normally sized man, though his head and face were larger than Nicklas considered ordinary. “Don't come a step closer,” he croaked, irritated at his lost voice.  
When the giant failed to respond, Nicklas tried again in English.

The giant rolled his eyes. “Save for Sasha,” he said in passable English, obviously surmising Nicklas spoke no Russian. “He thinks it funny.”

“Who— Sasha?” Nicklas was not awake enough or alert enough to form the full sentence.

The giant ignored both his question and his untranslated threat and reached for his arms again. Nicklas gave him a great kick to the midsection, aiming to crumple him in two, but the effort left him panting and the giant staring unimpressed at Nicklas’ foot in his stomach. “Save it,” he repeated, hauling Nicklas up by the collar. “Come. You need food.”

“Why are you doing this?” Nicklas asked him, stumbling down the hall with the giant’s unwelcome support. “What's happening?”

“Ungrateful,” the giant told him, grinning horribly. “He like that.”

“Who?” Nicklas demanded, furious, before he was pushed through a great foyer and into a small conservatory, where a table was laid with an opulent breakfast. At the table already was the other Russian, iron grey hair and a gap in his smile, and large, curious eyes set slightly too far apart. “Welcome,” he said. “Welcome to my island.”

-

To his credit, the new one caught on very quickly.

Somewhat too quickly, perhaps. Sasha rather enjoyed the look of dawning horror on new faces. It kept the routine fresh.

Somehow he didn't think “dawning horror”was an expression that would sit well on his features; clean and rested he had the air of a person not given to displays of shock, faint straight eyebrows and a small, fine mouth, currently pressed tightly closed as Sasha finished his speech. “You may as well try the coffee. It's very good, Sumatran. Gather strength. Eat.”

“Let me see if I have this right,” his newest guest sounded out, sitting very straight in a patch of sun, watching Sasha as though he was already trying to get the measure of him. His English was very precise, touched with— Sasha thought— Scandinavian vowels. “You're a hunter.”

“Very good,” Sasha praised, happy he wasn't panicking. It always took far too long to get them ready if Zhenya had to chase them down first. “Keep going, take your time.”

“And you intend to hunt me. For sport.”

“You're taking this very well,” Sasha said happily. “You'll have three days to rest, of course. It wouldn't be fair otherwise.”

“It wouldn't be fair.” He wrapped both elegant hands around the delicate China of his cup, but didn't drink. How strange, for a sailor to have such small fingers. “I see.”

Sasha thought he did, which was truly a delight. “I'm so glad.”

“I have a question,” his guest said, still meeting his eyes.

“Oh, me first,” Sasha told him, tilting his face to get a better look. Such even features, pale under the sun and salt burned over his nose and cheeks. Such big, deep-set eyes. “Where are you from?”

His guest blinked at him, perhaps incredulous. “Sweden,” he said, slowly.

“Your name?”

Sasha watched him bite his lip, drag it under a row of small, even teeth. “Nicklas,” he said. “I won't tell you more.”

Oh, it didn't suit him at all. Sasha felt his delight building. It had been so long since he'd truly had a challenge. Being the greatest hunter on the planet did lend itself to ennui. “Thank you. You may call me Sasha.”

Nicklas put his cup down, coffee untasted. “Why are you doing this?”

How disappointing. Sasha hoped he wouldn't beg. “It's important to do what you love.”

Nicklas glared at him. “And you just love to kill people.”

“Oh, no no, you misunderstand.” Sasha leaned towards him, willing him to listen. “I love to _hunt_ them.”

“Right,” Nicklas said, very slowly. “I think I'll be going.”

He threw the whole gently steaming pot of coffee standing between them in Sasha's face and made a devastatingly respectable break for the door, followed by a croak of dismay when Zhenya, waiting behind it, clotheslined him with one extra-long arm.

Sasha shook his head, watching. “A noble effort,” he praised, finishing his eggs. “I think this will be a wonderful experience for both of us.”

-

Nicklas was expecting the kind of thing one might find on the island of a deranged recluse whose hobby was killing for sport: shackles, torture, privations of every kind. Nicklas was unpleasantly surprised by how utterly serious Sasha appeared to be about the sporting part of the whole thing, having him gently nudged back to health at the hands of the man he called Zhenya.

Once again, Nicklas was hauled off the floor. Once again he was deposited in luxury, this time in a study with a great bear flayed on the wood, its black eyes watching him as Zhenya dropped him into an armchair to get his wind back.

“I don't suppose I could bribe you,” Nicklas rasped, throat aching.

“With what?” Zhenya asked him, looking him up and down.

“I'm not your type, I take it,” Nicklas muttered.

“Not unless you vodka,” Zhenya confirmed, “or an imperial pardon.”

“For what?”

Zhenya shrugged. “Oh, you sabotage one zeppelin and suddenly you gone too far, you're war criminal, everyone is forget you are on tsar’s payroll. Messy.”

“Can't help you there,” Nicklas confirmed. “Can I have a drink?”

“No,” Zhenya said, leaving him alone with the bear skin.

“What kind of murderer won’t let his victims have a drink,” Nicklas muttered under his breath, but the only company was already dead, so of course nobody answered.

Once his body felt less as though standing might be another one-way trip to the floor he stood up, still feeling strange. He was barefoot and the clothes Zhenya had laid out for him were not his. Morbidly, Nicklas suspected they had once belonged to a previous occupant of his position, a loose shirt crisply laundered and trousers that didn’t quite fit perfectly, though that was always the case with clothes he hadn’t had made or altered. It wouldn’t matter shortly, Nicklas thought, pricking his finger on the varnished tusks of a great black boar snarling out from the wall. What mattered was that they were flimsy, inadequate for the verdant forest he kept catching glimpses of beyond the shutters.

Nicklas was not a man who loved the tropics. He disliked the humidity and the mosquitos and had no taste for coconuts, but he supposed he’d have to manage.

How did one go about deciding to hunt people? Nicklas tried to picture of it, and then abandoned that line of imagination and tried the window. It creaked open, revealing a smooth lawn and a path down to the sea.

He remembered it, seeing the lights of a house in the distance, sure he was somehow hallucinating the incongruous opulence of it, warm windows and a wide porch after miles of frantic, freezing water.

He was halfway over the sill, toes brushing the grass, when Sasha laughed behind him. “We can start now, if you would like,” he said jovially, standing on the bear skin in a pair of gleaming boots, his coffee stained shirt dispensed with and nothing in its place, broad chest bare over his thick breeches. “I’m in no rush, but this is, ah, what is the word—”

“Collaborative?” Nicklas blurted.

“Yes,” Sasha said. He pointed at the rug, the chairs around it, glancing at a small game table. He smiled. “Sit down, tell me about yourself.”

Nicklas could have slipped out the window, and then what? A quick shot to the back?

He climbed back inside and sat down.

“Excellent,” Sasha said, pulling the table between them. “Shall I have Zhenya set the fire?”

“I take it that’s what he’s good at,” Nicklas muttered.

Sasha’s smile widened, displaying a missing tooth. In any other mouth it might have humanised him. Nicklas couldn’t help but wonder who had knocked it out and wish them well. “He is not easily bribed.”

“And you?”

Sasha looked up from where he was setting out a row of pawns, thick fingers very dextrous. His grey hair had fallen over his eyes, curtaining them. “How would you bribe me?” He asked curiously. “I have everything I want.”

Nicklas watched him set the final piece with a flourish. “I don’t play,” he lied.

“I can teach you,” Sasha said, unperturbed. “It is a very simple game.”

“You seem to like those.”

Sasha didn’t take the bait, sitting back with his hands laced contentedly across his bare ribs. “What do you like?”

Nicklas contemplated the board, white pieces turned towards him, waiting for his move. “I like not being hunted.”

Sasha sighed audibly, chest rising and falling like a great bellows. “That is a very dull answer. Shall we?”

-

Nicklas, to his credit, carried on with his lie that he couldn't play chess, and allowed Sasha to pretend at teaching him. He allowed himself to get the hang of it too quickly to truly be a novice, but it was a good showing, and boded quite well for his ability to disseminate when it would truly matter.

Sasha checkmated him, knowing it was a false victory, and watched a small line of displeasure crease deeply between Nicklas’ pale eyebrows. “You expected to win?” Sasha teased, enjoying himself immensely; Zhenya could say anything he wanted about it, Sasha really did prefer a little period of respite before beginning the chase.

 _like a child playing with his food_ Zhenya had chided him once, though he had no idea when last Zhenya had even seen a child, much less shared a meal with one. Still, it wasn’t wholly wrong.

“No,” Nicklas said slowly, forcing the word out.

“We really must get you into better clothes,” Sasha said, watching the way the fabric pulled tight over Nicklas’ thighs, trousers slightly too short at the ankle, exposing delicate bone and small, finely-formed feet. “I am being a terrible host.”

Nicklas glared at him. “These will do.”

“It’s not good to deny the obvious,” Sasha pointed out. “Unhealthy.”

Nicklas blinked at him, a long, slow, slide of his eyelids as though he somehow expected the picture to be different when next he opened them. Evidently, it was not, as he sat back in his chair and pulled one heavy knee up towards his chest, looping an elbow over the joint to keep it there. “I doubt you have many in my size.”

“I would be happy to part with my own,” Sasha said. “As I will have them returned, in the end. Zhenya will complain about the laundry, but that is what I pay him for.”

Nicklas muttered something that sounded unpleasant in quick Swedish, then pulled his lip between his teeth again. “I see,” he said, returning to English. Strange, for a common sailor to have such a grasp of it, but then, Sasha could hardly complain. It was still a shame Russian had fallen out of fashion with Swedes. They had such a lovely accent. “How did you come by this island?” Nicklas asked, drawing Sasha’s attention again.

“Ah, now, that is a story,” Sasha said, resetting the pieces on the board. “I once had a benefactor, one who saw my skill and knew I could one day take his place. He left me this place, on the condition that I continue his work. And of course that I continue to employ Zhenya, as all things must come with a price.”

“And where is he now?” Nicklas asked, watching his hands.

“Have you ever been in an air ship?” At Nicklas’ look of disgust Sasha felt himself smile. “Ah, the reaction of a born sailor. They are quite wonderful, though of course more prone to explosion than a ship of the traditional kind.”

Nicklas said nothing further, still curled in the chair, taking in the small movements of Sasha’s fingers. So little panic. Sasha wondered what it would be like to see him frightened, then reminded himself it would come in its proper time.

Sasha debated forcing him into one more pastiche of a beginner’s game, then thought better of it.  
much more fun to draw out the play.

-

Sasha had very few obligations beside intermittent communications, letters sent to other hunters around the world to be picked up from time to time by the captain he paid to keep him well supplied on the island and ask no questions. Ted had truly left him very wealthy, though sometimes Sasha did wonder whether the conditions of his inheritance had been undersold.

Nicklas seemed skeptical when Sasha took his leave, claiming attendance to his business interests, but said nothing to stop him. Sasha almost hoped he would, but it was always better to let them acclimate at their own pace. It made the beginning of the chase sweeter every time.

Zhenya found him in the study, where Sasha was occupying himself with a novel and tossing a favourite knife blade-to-hilt and back again in his other hand. “He’s snooping around,” Zhenya said, taking the stopper out of the decanter on Sasha’s sideboard and drinking directly from the bottle. “He’s nosy.”

“I know,” Sasha said happily, “and devious too, you should take notes.”

“He’s going to try to throttle you in your sleep,” Zhenya told him, swirling the whiskey around the bottom of the crystal bottle as though it were a cheap port.

“Oh, I hope so,” Sasha said, catching the knife by the blade with two fingers. “A sheet, do you think?”

“Last I saw he was lurking around the piano.” Zhenya shrugged. “Good luck to him if he can get a wire out without making a racket.”

“Such a shame it’s never played,” Sasha mused. “You should learn, you’re terrible entertainment. Expand your repertoire.”

“I hope he sends you to hell where you belong.” Zhenya toasted him with the whiskey before he capped it. “Will you be inviting him for dinner or shall I put him back in his room?”

“Oh, leave him,” Sasha said. “He’s still weak as a kitten, let him exhaust himself.”

“You’re a monster,” Zhenya reminded him. “You can learn to play the piano yourself, if you like it so much.”

“You can go,” Sasha said, throwing the knife at him.

Zhenya watched it whisk past his face to bury itself in the door with a look of supreme boredom. “Your aim needs work.”

Sasha turned back to his novel, having long since exhausted what other diversions Zhenya offered. There was only so much hatred which could be mined for entertainment before it became tolerance by sheer exposure.

-

Sasha invited him to dinner through Zhenya, who found him in the library, perusing the scant titles in languages he could read, fingers itching for any tool which would allow him access to the wires screwed tightly into the magnificent grand piano slowly warping itself out of tune in the great sitting rom.

Zhenya’s invitation was nearly wordless, simply a command to follow him and a look of suffering when Nicklas attempted to refuse.

Nicklas abruptly remembered being hauled over his shoulder like so much cargo to be flung in the hold and acquiesced, opting to save his strength.

Their destination turned out to be a vast dressing room, softly musty despite the sea air, and a wall of closets containing clothes in fifty years of styles. Zhenya positioned him in the middle of a small alcove of mirrors, salt-stained backing beginning to go pewter, and began to throw clothes at him.

Bemused, Nicklas caught a tailcoat before it hit his face, unable to squash his irritation. “I’m not some doll for you to dress.”

Zhenya snorted. “You’ll be trophy soon, easier to dress before you dead weight.”

“Practical of you,” Nicklas said, mouth abruptly dry.

“I live to serve,” Zhenya said, holding up a shirt to the light of the window with a high, starched collar and stiff panelling down the chest. “Put this on,” he ordered, tossing it to Nicklas before crossing his arms to watch.

“Could you turn around?” Nicklas asked, without much optimism. Zhenya shrugged and did, which was a strange relief. Nicklas pulled on the dinner suit, contemplating his back, his crossed arms and absurdly long legs. “How long have you been here?” Nicklas asked, finding the shirt to have no buttons, just holes on either side.

“Ten years,” Zhenya said, turning back around. “Ah.” He opened a small drawer and retrieved a box, checking its contents before approaching Nicklas and moving his hands away from the fastenings, starting to fit the little row of matched holes with small, gold studs.

“Doesn’t it bother you?” Nicklas asked, truly curious, trapped beneath his hands with his arms held out to his sides like a tailor’s dummy. “You have food, and drink, so there must be a ship. You must be able to come and go.”

Zhenya smiled at him and patted him on the cheek, a bracing slap that made Nicklas want very badly to punch him in the face. “Shut up,” Zhenya said, kindly. “Turn around, I tie your hair.”

This, Nicklas took exception to. “Absolutely not.”

Zhenya shrugged and took him by the shoulders, looking his dead in the eye. “We do this easy, or hard?”

Feeling less drained by the hour, Nicklas still wasn’t back to his full strength. Nevertheless, he managed a perfectly respectable punch to Zhenya’s diaphragm, hoping he had at least bruised him earlier. Nicklas felt the air rush out of him, just enough to loosen his grip.

Nicklas slipped out of his reach, edging around to the door. “Sorry,” he said, almost half meaning it. “At least let me die with dignity.”

Zhenya cursed a blue streak in Russian, but Nicklas was already halfway down the hall by the time his voice faded away. It was only when he was straightening the hang of the jacket that he discovered the small pliers in the pocket, sitting there like a gift.

-

All Nicklas could think about over dinner—a perfectly poached turbot with wilted fresh greens, so of course his palate rejected both textures—was the piano.

Why would anyone who lived on a tropical island in the jungle even have a piano? It was unplayed, bad tuning revealed from his one experimental press on the keys before he had decided making his interest known would be an error.

He must not have been circumspect enough.

Was it a trap?

Of course that was a ridiculous line of thinking. All of this was a trap, a great terrarium of strange tortures.

Sasha was happily talking about some aspect of taxidermy Nicklas was doing his best not to imagine happening to his body, though in practical terms he would be dead and wouldn’t care, as such. Still, he did his best to play at attention.

Nicklas imagined garrotting him, image vivid in his mind. It would be difficult. He would struggle.

Sasha was big, a great graceful slab of a man, bright intelligent eyes and strength in every line of his body. Nicklas watched him move, the stretch of his shirt —jacket removed, decorum be damned— across his wide shoulders.

“—and that is how the face is rebuilt,” Sasha continued, spearing a last shred of fish with his fork. “Fascinating, no?”

“Yes,” Nicklas murmured, watching his mouth. “Fascinating.”

“Well,” Sasha said knowingly, “I can see you’re very tired. Shall I have Zhenya take you to bed?”

Nicklas smiled at him. “No need. I can find my own way.”

“Still,” Sasha said, “he’ll help you.”

-

It would have been too much to hope that he would be able to sneak out of the bedroom unnoticed. The door was locked as soon as Nicklas crossed the threshold.

Luckily, the same window stood open, revealing beyond it the dense climbing vines which coated the house, a thin ridge of guttering for footholds, and a manageable drop to the lawn.

Nicklas hauled himself out and climbed down as soon as it was dark and quiet.

The window to the sitting room was also cracked.

It was too easy. It was all too easy, the pliers, the windows. It was too good an opportunity to pass up.

The piano resisted his attempts to open it, hinges of the lid creaking horribly, but Nicklas was certain nobody would disturb him.

He chose a wire thick enough not to cut his hands and set to work, easing open the pegs an increment at the time.

He wrapped it around his knuckles before he eased the lid back down, displacing a puff of dust. He fought back a sneeze and went to creep back upstairs.

-

Sasha woke to a great weight landing on his chest, forcing the air from his lungs.

He opened his eyes to the wonderful view of Nicklas, hair loose and eyes narrowed, bearing down on him, ready to choke him to death.

Sasha smiled at him, rolling quickly enough to dislodge him, pinning him with his greater weight.

“Delightful,” Sasha told him, meaning it. “You’re recovering so quickly.”

Nicklas bared his teeth at him, trying to throw him off and only partially succeeding. Oh, given a day or so he’d be formidable. Sasha contemplated him, the lingering bruises from his fight past the rocks around the shore and the dry skin of his lips before he leaned down to kiss him, feeling Nicklas go very still beneath him.

Sasha pulled back. “Forgive me, have I misinterpreted this?”

Nicklas blinked up at him. “This? This is— what?”

Sasha sighed, though he wasn’t fool enough to let go of him, aware of how fast Nicklas could move. “We both know you wouldn’t have been able to kill me. You were half dead yesterday.”

Nicklas snarled at him, though Sasha suspected it was half-hearted. “What makes you think— you’re going to murder me!”

“Need I point out,” Sasha said, relaxing slightly, feeling a significant interest making itself known in the pit of his stomach, “you are, ah, armed.”

Nicklas levelled a far more calculating look at him than the situation warranted. “I don’t suppose this changes anything.”

“It needn’t,” Sasha assured him.

“You're awfully calm about it.”

“Well,” Sasha ventured, “this is—” Nicklas bucked under him, making a displeased face when Sasha was not moved. “No, no,” he said. “Please, I'm not finished.”

Nicklas sighed. “By all means. Continue.”

“Thank you.” Sasha really was beginning to like him. “As I was saying. This is hardly the first time someone has tried to seduce me.”

“Is that— is that really what you think I’m doing?”

Sasha tightened his grip on his wrists, fingers flexing around the fine bones and tight muscle close beneath the skin. “Is it not?”

“No!” Nicklas hissed.

“Even better,” Sasha said, meaning it entirely. “It’s a very tiresome tactic, and frankly beneath you.”

Nicklas, tense as a bowstring, eased back enough to start laughing, a bright, hysterical chuckle that emerged from him while his eyes were still open. “I don’t know why I’m surprised,” he managed, still laughing intermittently as though he couldn’t quite contain it. Sasha resisted the urge to scold him when Nicklas aimed a knee at his groin, bringing more of his weight to bear against his broad hips.

“Would you like to go back to bed?” Sasha asked, when Nicklas stopped struggling again, having exhausted himself. It really was difficult to remember he had been half-drowned not so long ago, now he was warm and pink in Sasha’s bed. “We can take this up in the morning.”

“You’re— you’d really let me,” Nicklas whispered.

“Of course,” Sasha said, mildly offended. “I have only the purest of intentions.”

Nicklas did not strike Sasha as the religious kind; those usually began to beg and pray the moment he enlightened them to their roles here. Nicklas had done nothing of the kind, simply pressing for cracks at every available moment. Sasha did not think the entreaty he murmured at the ceiling in lilting Swedish was aimed at god. “You may as well kiss me again, then,” Nicklas said, delighting Sasha completely.

“I’d prefer it if you didn’t bite me,” Sasha told him, before he did.

-

Nicklas woke up with his own garrotte wire looped loosely around his wrists, not tight enough to cut into the skin but firm enough to, say, prevent him from using it as a weapon without a laborious process of untangling.

Sasha was sitting up against the headboard, nothing but a light sheet preserving whatever modesty he could be said to possess. Somehow the idea of modesty seemed incongruous. Perhaps it was the whole situation which made any usual metric of a quiet encounter seem misplaced.

Nicklas rolled over, facing him.

Sasha hummed happily, winding a finger into one of Nicklas’ curls and tugging gently. “Good morning,” he said. “Shall I help you?”

Nicklas considered refusing, but there didn’t seem much point. “If you would.”

Sasha untangled him quickly, keeping the wire. Nicklas was gratified by the livid bite mark on his neck, red and angry, standing out from the skin. Nicklas hoped he’d drawn blood.

Sasha patted the pillows next to him, inviting Nicklas to sit up. “So,” Sasha said, “if I ask for coffee will you throw it at me again?”

“I don’t like to repeat myself,” Nicklas rasped.

“Excellent,” Sasha said, ringing a bell on the bedside table.

Nicklas was about to die, in all likelihood, but the urgent panic of the last few days wouldn’t come, replaced with a slow, warm interest, a deeper curiosity that was treacherous in its weight; Nicklas knew better than to walk open-eyed into traps. Nicklas had been _trained_ better.

Still. It was very good coffee.

-

Nicklas’ gaming ability seemed to improve quite dramatically for a beginner.

Sasha teased him into a corner as the sunset was fading on his second evening, enjoying the small movements of Nicklas’ face as he was forced to concede his king yet again.

Nicklas sat back, staring at the board before he sighed and reached for his drink. “I think I will take a walk,” he said, ice clinking gently in his glass.

“A beautiful night,” Sasha conceded. “I will join you.”

Nicklas glanced at him, stretching his legs out before him before folding one over the other, ankle over knee. “You needn’t.”

“Maybe I simply enjoy your company,” Sasha teased, beginning to sense how lack of solitude was chafing at him. He must have been a nightmare at sea. The thought was intriguing. In any case he would have plenty of solitude soon enough.

Nicklas sighed. “Very well.”

Sasha was quite happy to lead the way, taking him out through the magnificent front doors and onto the sweeping lawn. There was no view of the sea with the faint hint of the waning moon, but its sound was everywhere, a distant susurrus of waves. Nicklas stood and breathed the wet, salted air, loosening the stiff collar of his shirt almost thoughtlessly.

Sasha had not thought to see him outside yet. “Do you like the house?”

“Does it matter?”

“Of course. You’re my guest.”

“For now,” Nicklas said, caustically.

“Indeed!” Sasha failed to see the problem.

Nicklas huffed, hair bright and pale in the darkness. He would be bound to have trouble disguising it. “Were we going to walk?”

Sasha offered him an elbow. Nicklas glared at him. Sasha kept his elbow out, expectant.

Eventually, Nicklas took it, linking his solid arm with Sasha’s, his fine hand hanging awkwardly, unoccupied. Sasha steered him around the wide porch ringing the south-facing side of the house, matching his steps until he realised Nicklas kept intentionally changing his rhythm.

“The house is Ted’s work, of course,” Sasha said, counting the little lights in Zhenya’s attic windows. “Though I have made some improvements.”

“Ted must have been even more—” Nicklas said a word in Swedish that sounded unflattering, “—than you.”

“He was a genius,” Sasha said, enjoying the look on Nicklas’ face when he did not rise to the bait. “We met in Russia, you see. I was already a great hunter, but Ted, Ted made me the very best.” Sasha could feel himself going misty-eyed anyway, sinking into the wonderful memory of Ted’s arrival in Moscow, seeking out a man to take him on the great hunt for the elusive Siberian tiger. “I showed him how to track like a Russian. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” It had helped that while Sasha was no coarse man of the wilds he had certainly benefited from Ted’s standards. “Ah, I have said enough.” He gripped Nicklas’ arm and steered him away from the path down to the shore where he seemed to be trying to casually stroll. “Tell me, how does a sailor find himself the only survivor of his ship?”

Nicklas glared at him, faint light catching against his pale eyes; if Sasha had not already known their colour, green like sea glass, he would have thought them almost entirely without pigment, save for his wide, uneven pupils. The effect was uniquely arresting. Sasha suppressed a shiver of anticipation, imagining them watching him through the thick trees.

“Well?” Sasha prompted, when Nicklas seemed willing to let Sasha stare in place of answering.

“Are you finished?”

“Please.” Sasha grinned. “I am listening.”

“I’m a strong swimmer,” Nicklas said shortly.

Sasha brushed a strand of his hair behind one of his perfectly-formed ears, intrigued when Nicklas’ eyes lowered briefly before resuming his usual look of disdain edging towards anger. “So is everyone who comes ashore here.”

“Then I am not special,” Nicklas said, disentangling himself.

“On the contrary,” Sasha said. He smiled, awash with pleasure. “You will lead me on a merry chase.”

“You are entirely mad,” Nicklas whispered, as they completed their circuit of the house, slipping between the garden huts to arrive back at the far less grand kitchen door.

Sasha leaned closer, watching the dark centres of his eyes grow wider and wider as he approached. “Oh, yes,” Sasha agreed. “Quite.”

Nicklas kissed him back, so Sasha felt he was at least a man capable of appreciating the moment. Truly, a treasure.

They stumbled through the door into the kitchen itself, darkened in Zhenya's absence, heavy and humid with the last heat of dinner; Sasha pushed Nicklas against the great slab of wood that was the kitchen table, delighted by the way Nicklas wavered briefly before perching on it, legs spreading wide as he regained his balance, making a perfect space for Sasha between them.

His teeth were really very sharp, especially buried in Sasha's lip.

-

The second time Nicklas woke up in Sasha’s bed it was less of a surprise, though it remained a uniquely strange experience.

Once again, Sasha was watching him. It was impossible to catch him asleep, though Nicklas wasn’t by nature an early riser. His exhaustion was waning, body feeling better by the day with a fair facsimile of rest.

He rolled over, cataloguing the small aches of the morning. He hoped Sasha was sore.

Sasha was sitting up against the ornate carved headboard of his massive bed with his hair falling into his eyes, knees spread wide to support his elbows. He was so big, not just in the obvious way. Nicklas found his eyes wandering, searching for a place where he seemed delicate. He found none, save perhaps the smallest of his toes. It was mildly infuriating, almost as much as the way Sasha sat there and let him look, enjoying the attention.

“Yes,” Sasha said, when Nicklas caught his eyes. “I’m quite the specimen.”

“So why didn’t your—“ the word for _benefactor_ escaped him, as did many of the synonyms for less flattering descriptions. “Ah. Your rich man. Why did he not hunt you, when you were here?”

Sasha looked at him, bright-eyed. “You assume he didn’t.”

Nicklas felt the shock pass through him and couldn’t identify its origin. Partly, it was the coldness of the proposition, that Sasha might have easily killed someone he spoke of with fondness, but the rest, the rest was a glimmer of interest Nicklas couldn’t smother. “So, if you hunt me, and it does not go your way, what then?”

“An impossible scenario,” Sasha said, gently cupping Nicklas’ cheek before he batted his hand away, unwilling to be so distracted. “I am the greatest hunter alive.”

“It strikes me,” Nicklas said carefully, “that you have not met every hunter alive, or you would not be so confident.”

Sasha smiled at him. It was a uniquely strange expression. “I have hunted for so long,” he said softly. “Shall I tell you the conditions I was given?”

“Please.” Nicklas watched his smile widen, wondering why it was only now reaching his eyes.

“Kill me and inherit the earth,” Sasha recited, touching a fingertip gently to the very end of his nose. “Or perish.”

Nicklas pulled him away by the wrist, wondering if what he was seeing on his face was some kind of glee, a pure rush of stored joy. “What conditions do you give others?”

Sasha waggled his finger, still extended. “Too eager, Nicklas. We have all day!”

Nicklas released his hand, and Sasha rang for breakfast.

-

He was excruciatingly aware of time slipping away.

As with so many things, there seemed to be little he could do about it, which meant he had different priorities.

He pretended at retiring to his room while Sasha was bathing after breakfast and made his way stealthily down to the kitchen on bare feet.

Zhenya was angrily separating silverware, back to the door.

Nicklas cleared his throat.

“Go away,” Zhenya said, tossing a handful of forks into the sink.

Nicklas had very little to lose, except his life, which was about to be forfeit anyway. He found Zhenya’s theatrical rage far less of an obstacle, given such a perspective. “May I ask you something?”

Zhenya looked over his shoulder. “If I say go away again, you go?”

Nicklas shrugged. “It is just a question.”

Zhenya abandoned his task to turn around. It was undoubtedly meant to be menacing. Nicklas discovered that having already danced with a devil and found him quite attractive the effect was limited. Zhenya observed him to be unmoved and rolled his eyes. “Ask.”

“You have been here ten years, you said. When did Sasha take over?”

Zhenya eyed him with a glint of genuine curiosity. “Why I should tell you?”

Nicklas shrugged. “He seems bored.”

Zhenya laughed, a deep bellow from the bottom of his chest, chest thrown back to reveal its depth. “Good luck to you,” he rasped, wiping a tear from his eye with a shirt-tail. “You do not know.”

“You're right,” Nicklas said, calmly. “I don’t.”

Zhenya sobered, enough to fix him with a frank, clear stare. “It would be… mistake. Think you have sympathy.”

Nicklas was not a gambler by nature, but he had, as a younger man, won a wager or two. The trick, he’d learned, was to make the stakes high enough that he felt too precarious to lose. “And I should listen to a man who hates him.”

Zhenya laughed at him again, a sort of mirthless chuckle. “Oh no,” he said. “You have me wrong. I love him like brother.”

Nicklas wasn’t fully able to contain the satisfaction at being right bursting through his chest, but he hoped he managed to keep it hidden, boxing it away. “I see,” he said, politely. “I won’t keep you further.”

Zhenya snorted at him, dismissing him with the turn of his shoulder.

-

Sasha found him in the trophy room, staring at the portraits.

True, they were warped from the sea air, and some had taken on the cracked look of carnival mirrors, but Sasha thought they had held up quite well all things considered. Some vastly pre-dated the island, left behind by Ted in his absence, aside from his last commission.

“Quite an arresting picture,” Sasha said, meaning the tableau before him, Nicklas standing at unconscious attention before Sasha’s personal favourite. “I think it is a good likeness.”

Nicklas’ eyes flicked over to him, filled with perfect disdain. “I disagree.”

Sasha came to stand next to him, linking their arms again, intrigued when Nicklas let him. Looking up at himself, Sasha failed to see a flaw; the lion skin was powerfully lifelike, as was the musculature of his torso. “What displeases you?”

“The eyes are wrong,” Nicklas bit out.

“Oh?”

“They look human,” he said, making no efforts to pull away after delivering his barb.

“Am I not?” Sasha asked, still examining the painted evidence.

“From a certain angle, perhaps,” Nicklas allowed, turning slightly to take in the rest of the trophies: antlers of all kinds, hooves, pelts and — ah yes, the neat row of skulls. “Not from others.”

“You’ll have a head start,” Sasha assured him, obliquely amused by his own joke. “It would not be fair otherwise.”

“Yes,” Nicklas murmured quietly. “Fair.”

The evening was warm, as they often were, with just the barest hint of the incoming monsoons on the air. They stood there, shoulder to shoulder, for another moment, as Nicklas took in the room. It was remarkable, Sasha reflected, how little his affect had truly changed from the time of his arrival. If anything, he seemed calmer.

“Shall we have a game before dinner?” Sasha asked, genuinely hoping Nicklas would agree.

“I suppose,” Nicklas sighed.

-

As the sun sank closer to the horizon Nicklas seemed to become more and more attuned to its relative position. The third time he glanced out the window over dinner, Sasha covered his hand with his own. “After midnight,” he explained. “As you arrived in the dead of night.”

“Yes,” Nicklas said flatly. “How could I forget.”

“Though I must admit,” Sasha said, sipping at a very decent red Zhenya had dug up for the occasion,” we were rather expecting your ship earlier in the evening.”

Nicklas swallowed his mouthful with a very deliberate movement of his jaw, rather like a snake resetting its mandible. “Expecting.”

“Oh, yes.” Sasha enjoyed this part so much he couldn’t help but leave it for last. “It is a faster shipping lane, but the shoals are truly too treacherous to navigate at night, unless someone is, shall we say—”

“Bribed to traverse it,” Nicklas said tightly, grip of his other hand rhythmically clenching and relaxing around his fork.

“Inelegantly put, but correct,” Sasha said. “Will you have dessert?”

“Bastard,” Nicklas whispered, withdrawing his hand from Sasha’s gentle hold.

“My parents were quite married.”

Nicklas made a swift attempt to stab him in the arm with the fork. Sasha dodged just in time, sending his chair toppling backwards and the wine onto the carpet. Nicklas seemed as though he might leap fully over the table to continue his attack, but having heard the crash of china, Zhenya appeared in the doorway. He leant against it, watching, and made no move to intervene. “I see he took it well,” he said to Sasha, in Russian.

“Ah, Zhenya, as always, _almost_ on time.”

“Fuck yourself,” Zhenya said genially, rolling up his sleeves. “If he stabs me you’re doing the stitches.”

Nicklas looked between them and cursed violently, entirely in Swedish, but as with all profanity, one need not know the letter to feel the spirit.

“I suppose we won’t be having dessert,” Sasha said, obliquely disappointed even as he said it.

“Over my dead body,” Nicklas said.

Sasha supposed he meant it literally. “I’d like the fork back, then, if you’re finished using it.”

Nicklas threw it at him.

-

It was a very warm night, thick with humidity, which was just as well, because it seemed Sasha was as good as his word about the nature of his game. Nicklas disliked being nude and disliked even more the swarm of insects which believed him to be a feast, which was unfortunate, given he was naked on the back porch and a mosquito had just bitten him on the thigh.

“A beautiful night,” Sasha observed, his humour recovered after Nicklas’ genuine outburst of ire.

“For you, maybe,” Nicklas muttered.

Sasha smiled gently at him. “You are not looking where I am looking,” he said, moving closer. Nicklas wished it wasn’t such a strange and intriguing sensation to be naked while everyone else was fully clothed, nor to be gently slapped on the behind to urge him off the porch.

Nicklas bit back a huff of outrage, taking his leave with as much dignity as he could muster. The grass was damp underfoot, the air thick with what felt like an incoming rain. Nicklas turned back to look at them, outlined from behind by the lights from the great windows. “This is your last chance to reconsider,” he said.

“See you in three days,” Sasha said.

It sounded like a promise.

Nicklas suppressed the shiver and turned again, itching to be showing them his back. He supposed the hunt would truly begin once he found himself on better footing.

As soon as the moon was high enough to give off its paltry crescent light he set off for the shore, picking his way carefully, on perilously soft feet.

He had made a cardinal error in allowing himself to think anything about Sasha might be straightforward. Of course he would never compromise his game. It was what he’d lived for. Nicklas corrected himself, even as he thought it. No, it was what he had taken for his own. That was distinct, a kind of inculcation Nicklas couldn’t fathom. No matter, for three days at least. Nicklas had training of his own.

-

A Chase

-

Being a Navy man had not wholly agreed with Nicklas.

It was not for lack of skill, which he possessed in abundance, nor lack of intelligence. The latter, he perhaps had shown too much of. He had often found that granting himself leave as a young officer to occasionally work an alternative course of action into a brief and later seek forgiveness rather than permission had served him reasonably well, but a problem with authority was not a sterling path to promotion. Nicklas had left as a warrant officer, never having quite managed to toe the line well enough for commission. It was just as well; he had always preferred less glory for better results.

Having become particularly adept at recognizing the capabilities of enemy ships from a glance had earned him a few strange nicknames, but he did have excellent eyesight, and he did have an obsessive’s familiarity with most vessels afloat.

Sasha's boatyard had three ships laid in dry dock, and none small enough for a man to sail alone, or interestingly even for two. He climbed into one, a sloop with its rigging furled tightly but still up despite the incoming weather.

A brief exploration revealed it to be stocked with fresh water and rations, as though anyone might sail it off at any moment, despite it being far from the water.

Nicklas wondered whether it was intended as a temptation, whether the food and drink were poisoned. He wondered at any number of things to stop himself from considering the single question of this nightmare, which was the manner of his eventual death.

The truly spiteful course would be not to engage Sasha. Nicklas would choose not to play this game. Nicklas could present himself on the lawn in three days time and accept his fate. Nicklas could deprive him of the chase he so craved, and then what?

An anonymous end. Lost at sea.

Nicklas tested a cask of water, finding it tasted clear. How strange. It was too perfect. He left it alone, choosing to keep moving.

Nicklas wouldn’t go quietly. He might know the most dignified possible end, but he would be damned before his _dignity_ robbed him of a fight.

He did take a set of clothes from a trunk, finding the boots too big but they other items serviceable. Clothed, he felt better.

-

The second day of his reconnaissance it began to rain, great sheets of monsoon downpour occluding his vision and forcing him to endure the instantaneous manifestation of mud everywhere, holding his tracks and soaking everything black.

Nicklas trekked down to the shore, disoriented by the thunder, and waded into the sea. He hesitated by the waterline, remembering the upwards rush of the deep, black waters, the ship sinking beneath him, the shoal claiming lives.

In contrast to the cold rain the water was warm, a downpour hitting his face even as he floated just past the breakers.

The waves were calm, the currents light.

In another life it might have been a paradise.

Nicklas kicked back to shore, confident that his fear of the waves wouldn’t keep him from the water, and went to find some shelter for the night.

He was beginning to get sick of coconuts.

-

The third evening, during a break in the rain, Nicklas heard a lone gunshot.

-

“Where do you think he is?” Sasha asked Zhenya, almost too excited to stand still.

Zhenya grabbed him by the back of the neck and finished buckling on his ammunition bag. “Too smart for the boat.”

“Of course,” Sasha muttered, impatient. “Do you think he’s found the caves?”

“If you don’t stop moving I will shoot you myself,” Zhenya threatened, though it was empty. He was already finished, lamplight glancing off the brass buckles and Sasha’s gleaming boots polished to a shine.

He wanted to give Nicklas at least a fighting chance to survive the night. “Shall I go out now? Or just fire the shot and leave him anticipating?”

“Somehow,” Zhenya said, with great suffering, “I don’t think leaving him in anticipation is your nature.”

Sasha declined to answer, peering down the sight of his rifle, focus beginning to narrow. “It’s wet. He’ll be leaving tracks.”

“Get out of here,” Zhenya said. “You’re vexing me.”

Sasha elbowed him away as he tried to buckle one final épaulette, feeling ready to face the rain.

He fired the shot of commencement into the trees, testing the accuracy of his aim.

It was, as ever, perfect.

-

The last three days had not been easy for Sasha.

For one thing, Zhenya’s company felt closer without the barrier of Nicklas between them, though Zhenya was disinterested in joining Sasha at night. He was as ever a formidable opponent at the games table, but that alone was not enough to ease Sasha’s sudden urgency.

Zhenya finally directed Sasha to the warped piano and bodily sat him down at the bench, pinning him by the shoulders. “Play something,” Zhenya said.

Sasha had grudgingly played a chord, drawing out a sad, out of tune minor note. “Be careful,” Sasha had warned him, “or I truly will make you learn.”

“What does it sound like?”

“Unplayed.”

“What else?”

“Like it’s missing a wire.” Sasha found himself smiling, thinking of it. “I wonder how he got it out. It can’t possibly have been easy.”

Zhenya’s thumbs worked their way into the hard muscles by Sasha’s neck, digging into the two days of tension Sasha had accumulated. “I’m sure it wasn’t.”

“Nice of you to give him something,” Sasha continued. “I assume you did.”

Zhenya’s thumbs dug in harder, sending a starburst of pain through Sasha’s back. “You think so highly of me.”

“I trust you to know what I like,” Sasha said, playing another horrible chord for emphasis. “Ah, right there.”

Zhenya dug in just hard enough, releasing a faint pressure at the base of his skull. One more day.

“Need I remind you,” Zhenya said, “that he didn’t hesitate to try to kill you in your sleep?”

Sasha felt a great fondness stirring in him, remembering Nicklas’ cold, furious eyes. “Oh, please do remind me.”

Zhenya slapped him lightly on one cheek from behind, a love-tap only he could manage. “You’re hopeless.”

Sasha disagreed. He was filled with hope, abundant with it. He was ready to have a great hunt at last.

-

Nicklas had left tracks around the dry docks, but hadn't taken any of the supplies or wasted his time trying to put it in the water.

Still, that wasn't its function. It was a temptation, a starting point, a shelter. He had left tracks leading away.

He was barefoot, Sasha noticed, remembering his small, fine-boned feet. He wouldn’t be cold. It was never cold here. He would be wet, though. Sasha wondered how he was taking to the thickness of the vegetation, whether he was as taken by it as Sasha had been, transfixed by the emerald greens of the leaves and the constant movement within it.

Sasha, when he'd first arrived here with Ted all those many years ago, had thought it very wild, and very strange, and had settled into it like a great tiger right away.

Nicklas’ tracks led him deeper.

Sasha had learned to hunt so young that he barely remembered the teaching if it, but he found himself tracing back his lessons; see, here you’ve brushed a branch. Here you’ve left a hair behind, trapped in a vine. He imagined Nicklas standing next to him, taking in the instruction.

Sasha shook away the image, strand of muddied golden hair wrapped around his finger.

The tracks led him across the narrow spit of peninsula to the strip of marshy beach which ringed the island, a thin band of white sand perpetually damp with the constant encroachment of waves.

Sasha lost the trail, as he was intended to.

“Clever,” Sasha murmured, stroking a thumb over the strand of hair digging a thin line into his skin, wanting desperately to look into the canopy and see Nicklas take his measure, streaks left in the wet bark of the tree he’d passed too recent to have been glossed over by the rain.

Sasha imagined him again, unable not to conjure his shape. Clothed from the ship, muddied, irate. Sasha grinned to himself, delighted. He didn’t look up.

-

Nicklas had been at sea in the Arctic once.

The ship had been a great icebreaker, girded all over with heavy iron to plow through the floes that closed in around Sweden’s north, and that had been his favourite thing about it.

They had encountered some Russians, of course. That was only natural, both of them had claims to the sea, and both of them had iron-sided ships of war.

Nicklas wondered if he’d be in better stead in this humid hell if he’d devoted more time to knowing them and less to bluntly attempting to torpedo them out of territorial waters, but then again, Sasha was a beast entirely singular to himself.

Nicklas supposed insanity did that to a man.

There was a particular sensation to being hunted that was nothing like being slowly stalked through narrow channels by equally glacial vessels. That was impersonal, removed.

This —Sasha’s breath passing beneath him and Sasha’s great wide eyes scanning the shore, the heavy breadth of his shoulders pushing aside the vines as Nicklas watched from above— this was real. Nicklas’ breath caught in his chest, every sinew in his body pulled tight, his eyes fixed open by the sight of Sasha passing below.

He moved like he did at night, smooth and slow and inexorable. Nicklas watched him pluck a hair from the vines around the trunk of the tree with his breath locked tight in his chest, fingers clenched so hard against his lips he half thought he would draw blood from cutting his mouth on his teeth. The wetness, in the end, saved him. Nobody in their right mind would try to climb against the slickness of the bark. It had taken him too long, but he’d gambled on Sasha following his most recent tracks.

Sasha didn’t look up, following Nicklas’ tracks to the edge of the trees and down beyond, and then he moved off along the shore, leaving only one word in Russian in his wake.

Nicklas waited until he could no longer hear him displacing the water to slide down, aching from inactivity and suffused with another sensation, one too familiar to be strange. Nicklas hadn’t bet on the sheer sight of it, the light of purpose in his eyes directing him as surely as any other predator.

Nicklas would be a fool to follow him. Sasha would be a fool not to think Nicklas had been waiting to take his measure.

Nicklas was doubly foolish to have let him pass without springing down on him and trying one more time to choke the breath from him, but neither of them had used their moment. It troubled him, but not enough to stay where he was.

-

The island had a very different quality when he knew Sasha was prowling it.

He was like a ghost, a spectre in the darkness emanating malice, every brush of leaves and crack of vines a potential moment of contact.

Nicklas was crusted with salt from his repeated forays into the ocean to erase any patterns of his movements and he was so tired of tropical insects that a part of him felt he would never recover the blood.

All the while, Sasha was around, just behind him, out of sight.

Nicklas could still feel the thick muscle of his throat beneath his hands, the wide weight of him throwing him off. Nicklas turned away from the rest of the memory: the softness of his sheets and the warm, clean scent of them. The morning light through the slowly disintegrating curtains. Coffee.

Focus. He had to focus. He could not afford to be tired.

He’d thought being hunted would involve a lot more running.

No sooner had the thought occurred but a rifle crack sounded off behind him. The bullet flew past him, off by metres, but Sasha was close.

Nicklas took off at speed, irritated beyond measure at having his idle-minded musing come crashing to fruition. Between gasps for breath, Nicklas decided it was high time to formulate a plan.

-

“I think I’m wearing him down,” Sasha said, on the night of the second day. “He’s getting slower.”

Zhenya, polishing silverware at the dining room table, ignored him.

“I saw him,” Sasha continued, pacing before the fire with a glass of unsatisfactory cognac clenched in one hand, leaving the other free to gesticulate. “He’s so pale. You’d think—”

“Are you trying to say you hoped he’d be slathered in mud waiting to ambush you at any moment instead of running for his life?” Zhenya didn’t pause in his meticulous scrubbing of an ornate teapot. “I think you could use the exercise.”

Sasha drank his cognac in petulant silence, wondering why he felt so strange simply shooting at Nicklas, as he had countless times with other prey. “Zhenya,” Sasha said slowly, “how long have we been here?”

Zhenya shook his head, and said, with great forbearance: “I don’t know. You can’t expect me to count the days of my imprisonment for your benefit.”

“You’re free to go,” Sasha said, annoyed to be sidetracked by Zhenya’s boring death sentence. “I’m not stopping you.”

Zhenya rolled his eyes and got up to pour himself a drink, abandoning the silver and throwing the entirety of his long frame into one of the chairs closest to the fire, kicking his feet up against the small table intended for his glass. Sasha thought he had the look of a dog which had recently mistaken a stone for a joint of bone, but decided to keep the thought to himself.

Zhenya glared at him until he came closer, pointing rudely in Sasha’s direction. “Just kill him.”

Sasha had no explanation for why he hadn’t, save that Nicklas had been doing an excellent job of evading him. Still, he couldn’t deny that the idea of just killing him seemed untenable somehow. This wasn’t how it was meant to have gone. Nicklas was leading him in an excellent chase, doubling back on himself, never sleeping in the same place twice, never availing himself of the caves down on the rockier side of the island which had ended so many others in their false safety; they only had one entrance and exit. It was the best hunt he’d had in years. Sasha wasn’t truly enjoying himself. “I’m bored,” Sasha announced, draining his glass. “Tell me something interesting.”

“No,” Zhenya said. “Go play with your food.”

“Please,” Sasha said, offended. “You insult me.”

“More often than you’ll ever know,” Zhenya told him. “You did this to yourself.”

Sasha didn’t pause to ask what Zhenya meant, stalking out of the dining room to put an end to his ennui.

-

Nicklas woke with a start at a distant sound.

In the very darkest part of the night when his body grew leaden and began to demand sleep, he had taken to scaling trees to rest in, untrusting of the ground.

Still, he thought that maybe Sasha retreated at night to sleep in his soft bed, to begin fresh at dawn, because Nicklas had seen no trace of him even when the night birds went silent.

The noise was nothing, a creak of branches in the wet breeze. Nicklas was awake nontheless, awake and restless.

Perhaps it was a trap, or Sasha simply planned to continue wearing him down knowing Nicklas wouldn’t sleep well.

There were caves on the far side of the island which offered a dry resting place but no way to escape if blocked in. Nicklas had seen many dens dug into the earth almost in the shapes of men, shallow troughs waiting for a body, though there was nothing larger than a human on the island.

Nicklas could lose sleep until he died in one of them, or he could do something else.

He took care to leave an item of clothing here and there as he wound his way in dizzying circles across the island before he headed down to the shore.

Slipping into the water felt perfect, the warm sea embracing him as he swam towards the point closest to the house to wait for dawn.

He supposed he could have been subtler about it, but streaking himself with the wet, dark earth where sand became shore and moving as slowly as he could through the thick trees ringing the house occupied most of his attention.

So it happened that when he did let himself quietly into the kitchen he hadn’t truly planned on facing Zhenya clothed only in mud and not at all armed. That would be changing soon, but for the time being it was certainly not to his advantage.

“Hello,” Zhenya said, when Nicklas had finished breaking in.

Nicklas was startled into civility. “Good morning. Has he gone out?”

Zhenya, seated at the kitchen table with a spread of breakfast and what smelled like very strong tea, raised both his hangdog eyebrows. “Yes. Tea?”

“What?” A muddy glob of dirt dripped off his hair to run down his chest.

Zhenya sighed heavily, put out to be suffering Nicklas’ presence. “Tea. You want?”

“Actually,” Nicklas said slowly, “I was hoping I might borrow a knife, and some… supplies.”

Zhenya shrugged. “You take. Why I should care?”

“I’ll kill him.”

“Will you?” Zhenya asked, affecting a philosophical tone. “Sit. Tea. Then maybe knives, maybe other things. You leave him a trail?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Good.” Zhenya rolled his eyes. “I give you tea, you run longer, Sasha stop talking about how you disappoint him.”

Nicklas, who had inched closer, imagining his hands around Zhenya’s throat, froze in his tracks. “ _What_ did you just say?”

Zhenya grinned at him and kicked a chair out in his direction. “Sit.”

Nicklas sat, elbows leaving dark streaks in the pale wood of the table’s work-scarred surface, and took a mug of tea. It was dark and tasted of smoke, unchanged by any additions, though Nicklas saw a jar of jam near the pot. “What did he say?”

“He get bored very easy,” Zhenya said. “Maybe you know this.”

“You’ll just let me go? Take what I want?”

“Where is Sasha?” Zhenya asked, gesturing around them. “Out of my hair, hunting. For him, this is best.”

Nicklas considered him, taste of the tea strong on his tongue. He didn’t feel drowsy, or pained. There was nothing in the drink to hinder him. There was only Zhenya, unfathomable as always. “I’ve disappointed him, have I?”

Zhenya laughed at him, a hard glint in his eyes. “What you’re taking?”

“What about the others? You helped them too?”

Zhenya’s shrug could have meant anything. Nicklas was shocked at the stir of anger in him, different from the fury at being powerless to affect the trajectory which set him out as prey to begin with. It was uglier, more animal. “I’ll need a knife,” Nicklas told him. “And a tinderbox.”

“You want breakfast?” Zhenya asked, offering him the last slice of toast in its elegant silver rack.

Nicklas did, damn him.

-

Well-fed, Nicklas felt better.

The anger, however, had yet to fade, even as he made his way back to the waterline laden with an oiled sack of supplies. Zhenya had declined to allow him to take any clothes, which Nicklas felt didn’t warrant close examination, but he had been very generous with his provisions otherwise.

Nicklas attempted to dwell on the logic of Zhenya’s help but it kept slipping away, disappearing into the smouldering resentment which had taken hold of him. Nicklas walked into the sea almost muttering to himself, conjuring an invisible facsimile of Sasha to focus on.

 _Bored?_ Nicklas submerged himself, mud sluicing off his skin in the saltwater, kicking back to a point farther down the shore.

Once upon a time, Nicklas had been assigned to a shore detail on a godforsaken spit of rock sticking out into the arctic sea, and while Nicklas had not truly enjoyed being attacked by Norwegians, he had found an oblique satisfaction in watching the landlocked soldiers create an ambush a Naval man would never have occasion to learn.

In retrospect, Nicklas could identify few moments in his life in which his own fog of disinterested competence had lifted. It was food for thought, distracting him even as night fell and he finally rose from the sea to go about his business.

By the end of the night he was covered in earth again, gritty wetness of it beginning to feel natural.

It was just plain luck that the rains had held off for a few days, as it made it much easier to head back to the dry dock near dawn, salvage the casks of water and set a pitch-soaked curl of sail alight. The rest of it would catch in its own time, dry enough to burn.

Nicklas allowed himself a moment of appreciation for the flames before he slipped back into the forest, waiting for company.

Nicklas felt starved suddenly and could not identify the origin of the sensation. No matter. Sasha would be along shortly.

-

Sasha woke in a strange mood, wondering why he felt as though he had already been running, until he saw the remnants of the bucket of iced water Zhenya had roused him with, the better part of it dripping frigidly through his hair and trapped in his eyelashes.

“The boatyard is on fire,” Zhenya said, dumping the rest of it on his chest. “Get up so I can change your sheets.”

Sasha grinned at him, filled with a sudden magnanimous forgiveness for his rude awakening. He extended a hand for Zhenya to haul him out of bed. “How much fire?” Zhenya directed him to the great picture window, standing beside him while Sasha took in the massive column of smoke rising into the murky dawn, black against the faintly lightening sky. “Oh,” Sasha breathed, suffused with anticipation. “Fetch me my rifle.”

“Get it yourself,” Zhenya said. “It’s on the table.”

“You do spoil me,” Sasha told him, with great feeling.

A matter of minutes later, he was cutting a path through the trees. He could almost let himself hum happily, if that wouldn’t give away his approach to Nicklas, who was undoubtedly laying in wait somewhere.

He could be nearby. He could be watching right now, settled near the burning hulk of whatever he’d set alight. Sasha imagined the glint of fire reflecting in his eyes the dawn encroaching quickly.

Perhaps it was the flatness of the light or Sasha’s excitement that dulled his perceptions of the forest floor. Perhaps it was simply that Sasha had allowed himself to think Nicklas had settled into predictability, and his delight at the new development of their game had not quite erased it.

In either case, Sasha was taken by surprise when a snare closed quite abruptly around his ankle and yanked him into the air with a snap of released branches.

Sasha lost his grip on his gun, watching it fall to the floor with something like disbelief as he swung wildly to the side, recoil of the snare’s tension dizzying in his violence.

All the blood rushed to his head at once, addling him just enough that for a moment he was unsure whether the mud-covered figure crouched beside the tree which supported the rope was Nicklas at all, only the green of his eyes visible in the gloom.

Nicklas watched him swing. “Hello,” he said, when Sasha had rotated such that he was out of sight. “I was not expecting you so soon.” Sasha thrashed upwards, attempting to get a hand around the rope, but suddenly Nicklas was behind him, grabbing for his wrists. “Oh no, not yet,” Nicklas said, still in that same measured, conversational tone as he wrestled Sasha’s arms behind his back. He was damnably strong for someone who had likely not slept well for days. Sasha fought not to shiver as Nicklas held him still, fingers gritty against his skin. “Were you so eager to see me you walked in a straight line?”

Sasha wished he could see him, instead of just feel him, the heat of his presence against his spine. He tried to gain some leverage against Nicklas’ grip, but all he managed was just to sway in place, back of his skull bumping the softness of Nicklas’ bare skin. “Very well played,” Sasha said, beginning to see stars, blood pounding in his ears. “Will you kill me?”

Nicklas hummed, noise going all the way through Sasha’s body, every muscle bowstring-tight. Maybe he ought to have resorted to a bow, he mused. It would have been more elegant.

“Tell me,” Nicklas said, swinging him back and forth, just enough to disorient him. “The bodies. What do you do with the rest of them?”

“What?”

“You keep the skulls. The rest. Do you eat them?”

“I— what are you implying?”

“Answer me.” Nicklas swung him further, the movement nauseating even to Sasha’s empty stomach.

Sasha breathed through his nose, but all he accomplished was a great burst of scent, wet earth and greenery and Nicklas’ human skin. “No.”

“Hm,” Nicklas murmured. “Wasteful.”

Sasha had no response to that, but he had no need of one. Nicklas abruptly let him go, giving him one last dizzying push before he collected Sasha’s rifle and disappeared into the trees. Sasha waited until he was swinging more gently to attempt to right himself, finally cutting the rope with his belt knife and falling to the floor just before the pressure in his skull rendered him insensible.

He lay on his back for a moment, watching the black spots clear from his eyes, before he realised he was smiling, a wide grin fixed across his face.

Nicklas couldn’t have gone far, but he would have to step carefully.

-

He could hear Sasha laughing as he walked.

It was a figment of his mind, of course, but Nicklas hadn’t been able to displace the image of his face as he stepped into the snare — disbelief and then a wild grin, painted in a rictus across his features — even as he had kept himself behind him, the better to take his measure.

Touching him made him real.

No amount of bullets had made his danger as obvious to Nicklas as the feel of his skin or the sound of his voice, because Nicklas didn’t care much for the impersonal weaponry of war. Nicklas didn’t think hard about what a bullet might do to his body, or the way it would cause him to die.

Nicklas thought viscerally of the weight of Sasha’s muscle and the brief glimpse of shock on his face when Nicklas had trapped him.

He had never seen much point in the catch and release fishing some of his childhood friends had engaged in. It had seemed sad at the time, pointless. Why send an injured animal back into the water to be killed by its peers?

That being said, Nicklas hoped Sasha had cut himself down before the blood pooled in his head and rendered him unconscious. _That_ would have been a boring end.

Nicklas could have killed him with just one cut and left him to bleed out into his island. It would have been very simple.

Nicklas picked up his pace, sure that when Sasha regained his faculties he would be after him, and all the daylight remained to aid him.

Sasha would resume his chase.

-

The next morning, when he began to sense Sasha had begun his prowl, Nicklas slipped back up to the kitchen door.

“Still alive?” Zhenya was picking his teeth with a silver toothpick, the remains of a decimated smoked fish beside his elbow at the table. “You miss breakfast.”

Nicklas tossed the knives he’d been lent down between them. After all the cutting and splicing of rope he had set himself to, his fingers were raw and the blades were blunt.

Zhenya frowned at him. “Where is other one?”

Nicklas helped himself to a cup of tea from the cooling pot. “Would you like to search for it?”

Zhenya quickly examined him and settled on a disinterested shrug.

Nicklas did not plan to stay long, but something in Zhenya’s manner seemed to suggest an easing. It was not to be trusted, as Zhenya himself had made very clear, but — Sasha had not answered his question. “The trophies,” he ventured. “Just the skulls?”

Zhenya just smiled at him. “Why you’re ask?”

Nicklas sipped his tea. “No reason.”

“Is poison,” Zhenya said conversationally, watching him drink.

Nicklas swallowed with great deliberation. “Lucky I have a very well-formed skull, then.”

Zhenya considered him, gathering the knives with one long arm. “How long you think you’re living?”

“Why do you ask?” Nicklas parroted at him.

“Laundry,” Zhenya said.

Nicklas finished his tea in his own time before he left.

-

The second time Nicklas got the better of him, it was because Sasha was distracted.

The night before, he had staggered home gleefully defeated, too tired even to take his own boots off.

Zhenya had worked at the buckles with great reluctance, finally yanking them off and then bestowing upon Sasha a look so unimpressed Sasha was half-tempted to laugh at him. “I disappoint you?”

“Always,” Zhenya sighed. “So, if this continues, and he doesn’t die. What then?”

“I’m sure you can stand not to boil another skeleton. I know how much you dislike tannery.”

“You’re not bored any longer, I take it.”

Sasha had looked up at him, delight burning through his chest. “Zhenya, he snared me. Like an animal.”

“And then he let you go.”

Sasha sighed in exhausted satisfaction. “He ran all day. Amazing.”

Zhenya had straightened to his full height, too tall to be wholly in proportion. “You’ll have to kill him eventually,” he said. “No matter how long it takes.”

“What are you saying?”

Sasha hadn’t gotten an answer out of him. Zhenya had retreated with a roll of his eyes, leaving Sasha to undress himself in the foyer with only a stack of clean towels for company.

Uncharacteristically, he had not slept well, and so the exchange was still on his mind at mid-morning the next day when Sasha stepped into a patch of shrubbery and abruptly fell into a pit not quite twice his height in depth, only barely wide enough for him to extend an arm and too soft to gain purchase in the soil.

The work that must have gone into digging it was awe inspiring, which he told Nicklas when he came to sit on its edge, small feet dangling just out of reach. “How did you manage it?”

“Why did you leave the ship rigged?” Nicklas asked, without answering Sasha’s question, though his enquiry might have led him to it. “The water? The supplies?”

The sun had not yet begun to reach inside the pit, but soon it would crest the lip and bear down on him, slowly burning the water from his body. “I like to give all comers a fair chance,” he said. “Or it would hardly be a hunt.”

“And a place you know the desperate will return to.”

“Some of the food is laced,” Sasha admitted. “Zhenya’s own concoction.”

“Was,” Nicklas corrected. “ _Was_ laced.”

Sasha basked for a moment in the glow of his glorious arrogance. “Yes. Indeed.”

Nicklas smiled down at him. “This angle suits you.”

Sasha grinned up at him. “I suppose you’ll leave me here to rot, will you?”

“I suppose I had better,” Nicklas said, pushing himself to his feet. “You could climb, if you are—” he searched for the word, tracing a circle in the air with his index finger— “logical about it.”

“I wish you’d stay,” Sasha said, as Nicklas kicked a bit of dirt down on him.

“Do you?” Nicklas leaned down for a better look. “Why?”

Sasha had no response, tongue suddenly dry in his mouth, and in his moment of hesitation, Nicklas disappeared.

-

Sasha did manage to climb out eventually, leading himself back towards the house through what he hoped was a clear path, only to trip on a low-strung rope, a single fibre disentangled from a much thicker ship’s coil, and setting off the bent sapling it was attached to, winding him with a blow to the ribs.

As Sasha lay on his back in the dirt, he watched the burning sun sinking away through the canopy of trees and wondered if he’d ever felt quite like this before.

No, Sasha thought, raising a hand to where the bruise would spread, a wide band across his ribs, cutting a deep purple over his heart. This was what he had been waiting for.

His breath came back in ragged gasps, lungs filling to capacity enough to let out the faintest of laughs. Sasha wondered where Nicklas was, whether he was watching. He wondered what had changed.

Pushing himself to his elbows, Sasha paced himself back to his home, its wide-open rooms and musty sea smell, and Zhenya, who had some explaining to do.

-

Nicklas placed himself in the trees facing the house and watched Sasha stagger back up the sweeping lawn to the stairs leading to the enormous front door. From the distance of the tree line he looked smaller, though that could have been the wounded hunch of his shoulders as he clutched at his ribs.

Nicklas barely saw his posture, besides noting that he had placed the branch at exactly the right height to best damage him.

No, Nicklas was watching his face, the wide, manic grin, the bright fire in his eyes.

Nicklas stretched back in the crotch of the tree he had chosen as his crow’s nest, working at a kink in his back that had been stubbornly refusing to release itself. It finally gave as Sasha disappeared past the threshold, and Nicklas slipped out of the branches to set himself to his night’s work.

It had been many years since he had needed to make his own nets, but some lessons of childhood never disappeared, and there was something soothing in the creativity of it. Nicklas had been quite enjoying returning himself to the craft of wild living, though he might admit to longing for a shave.

Perhaps he’d ask Zhenya for a razor in the morning.

-

Sasha sank gratefully into his bath, submerging himself until the bruise across his chest —maturing to a fine blue— began to ache.

He surfaced, breaking the water with a satisfying splash and hooking his elbows over the lip of the wide tub, muscles of his chest and back radiating the deep and pervasive pain of torn tissue.

Zhenya was sitting with one ankle crossed over its opposing knee, staring at the ceiling. Sasha cleared his throat. “I understand this is tiring for you, but please consider my injuries.”

Zhenya glared at him. “I’m not scrubbing your back.”

“You’ve done worse.”

“And regretted it.” Zhenya tossed the soap at him. “Notify me if you’re about to drown.”

“Your compassion sustains me.” Sasha began to laboriously scrub the dirt from his hair, a process hindered by his tender ribs.

Eventually, Zhenya gave up his pretence of disinterest and moved his folding seat behind the brass rim before he pulled Sasha backwards by the shoulders, taking over the task.

Sasha relaxed into his rough grip, letting his eyes close against the water rushing over his face. “So,” he ventured, when Zhenya pushed him forward to scrub between his shoulders, “how does he seem to you?”

Zhenya didn’t pause for even a moment. Sasha truly did appreciate him. “Filthy,” Zhenya said, “which I’m sure you could observe for yourself.”

“Nothing else?”

Zhenya took him by the back of the neck with one enormous hand, holding Sasha’s face dangerously close to the water. “What are you asking?

“I think you like him,” Sasha said, nose brushing the water.

Zhenya held him in silent threat for the space of five heartbeats, blood and water the only sound besides Sasha’s own audible breath. “I think you’re clean enough,” Zhenya said, with great deliberation. “Enjoy getting out of there, I certainly won’t be helping you.”

He released his grip, warmth of his fingers leaving the mark of his hand behind.

He’d offended him. No matter, Zhenya would recover, and in any case, Sasha had at least the part of an answer; Zhenya did love him, in his own way. Sasha really should be thanking him for prolonging the game, even if —easing himself back against the copper of the tub— it really was very difficult to extract himself from the bath alone.

-

Nicklas was rapidly gaining the strength of a daily swimmer.

He let himself into the kitchen mid morning, greeting Zhenya with what was becoming their usual interaction of a terse wave from Nicklas and a disgruntled frown of acknowledgement on Zhenya’s part. “You are late,” Zhenya said, with uncharacteristic interest, when Nicklas had taken his usual seat across from him. “Lazy.”

Nicklas had not bothered to disguise himself knowing Sasha would be out hunting already. He was markedly less filthy than usual, though still crusted with salt from his morning journey. The salt had begun chafe, but Nicklas would live. Perhaps he had allowed himself just a bit more sleep than usual. He thought Sasha might be sore enough to get a late start. “I don’t suppose I could trouble you for a razor.”

Zhenya laughed mirthlessly at him and pushed a cup of tea across the table. “Other things? Champagne? You want I catch you fresh fish?”

“I hate fish.” Nicklas drank his tea, dripping seawater onto the table between his braced elbows. Zhenya watched him with narrowed eyes. Warning began to prickle over the back of Nicklas’ neck, the air between them held still by some intangible tension.

Nicklas’ throat, already salt-stripped, began to feel strange.

“Don’t panic,” Zhenya said, going back to his own cup, carefully stirring a spoonful of jam into it as Nicklas’ vision began to blur. “Is not hurt much.”

Nicklas watched him drink before his eyelids became too heavy, slowly sliding sideways until he was half draped on the table, wondering why his limbs would no longer quite obey him. He must have almost slurred a question, because Zhenya finally smiled brightly at him, face beginning to distort into a smear of faded colours. “Oh no,” he said genially. “Is in glass. You trust everyone who is give you knife?”

Nicklas attempted to formulate a response, but instead abruptly lost his grip on consciousness, world resolving into warm blackness.

-

Sasha was surprised to awaken around late morning, still blissfully nude and sprawled in bed in a shaft of sun driving through a gap in the curtains at a wholly incorrect angle.

Sasha stretched, taking a moment to examine the facts before leaping to conclusions. He was still sore, stiffened by rest, which he discovered upon rolling over. Secondly, Zhenya hadn’t quite performed his duties as usual, instead leaving Sasha to his deep sleep instead of rousing him and helping him dress.

How irresponsible. Sasha would have to have a word with him. How could he be expected to keep up the chase if he allowed himself this indolence?

Still, no matter. He might have gained advantage over Nicklas again if Nicklas had been laying in wait for him, only for Sasha to decline to appear. The more he considered the thought the more attractive it was; Nicklas crouched and ready by some inventive torture he’d devised, waiting for Sasha to lose his footing, or look down for a moment too long, save that Sasha was in bed, slowly working a hand down the rise of his own chest.

He was pressing one hand into the bruise livid across his ribs and gripping himself, half-hard, with the other, considering the merits of making Nicklas wait for him, of stalking out at night, catching him unaware, when Zhenya appeared in the doorway.

“Busy?” Zhenya asked, with a note of suffering in his voice.

“Obviously,” Sasha said, only slightly breathless. “Need I ask what so diverted you this morning you forgot to wake me?”

Zhenya watched him without passion, eyes skipping over the movement of his hand below the light sheet. “I can come back later,” Zhenya said, “if you’d like to finish.”

“Zhenya,” Sasha said, as he turned to go, “don’t expect me to believe you let me sleep by accident.”

“As you wish,” he said.

Alarmed, Sasha tried to ask if he was somehow falling ill, but Zhenya had already taken his leave. Sasha sighed, arousal undischarged, and began to collect himself.

-

Lunch was a strange affair.

Sasha had taken to foregoing it in the last few days, thrill of the chase eclipsing the need for food until the evening, and beside that, the state of his body meant Sasha was ambivalent about the ordinary kind of nourishment.

Zhenya had laid two places at the table, which was also strange, as he preferred to eat where Sasha wouldn’t watch him. It was perhaps a holdover from when Sasha had been newly adopted and was utterly fascinated by him as a contemporary, especially one who had already had such interesting employment. 

He was nowhere to be seen for quite some time, which was a more usual occurrence, but as the clock began to chime its incorrect half-hour, Zhenya reappeared. He sat himself down in the second chair but didn’t eat, instead staring at Sasha while he helped himself to the salad.

Sasha had a mouthful of vegetation and was beginning to feel not unlike a specimen in a terrarium when Zhenya got up and left again without a word, coming back to the table with a glass of the clear, acrid liquor he distilled himself which Sasha occasionally pilfered. It gave off a scent not unlike lye and did not taste dissimilar.

“So,” Zhenya said, throwing back half the glass. “Will you hunt him today?”

“Have you got a fever?” Sasha asked, curiously, checking for the signs. Zhenya’s hands were steady, and he was no moister than usual, nor his eyes more significantly red-rimmed. If anything, he looked quite well. Perhaps even slightly less sallow. He had what might have passed for a healthy flush on any other face. “Have you dosed me again? I’ve always said, if you plan to kill me, please let me know and I’m sure we can work something out.”

“He’s probably wondering where you are,” Zhenya continued, as though Sasha hadn’t spoken.

Sasha put his fork down, silver clinking loudly against the fine china of his plate. “I suppose you would know better than I.”

Zhenya, confronted with Sasha’s accusations of meddling, just picked up his glass again, looking into it as though it might suddenly leap beyond its confines and ooze away, which was not, in Sasha’s opinion, beyond the realms of possibility. “He thought I had helped him, before the hunt began. He asked me why.”

Sasha, faced with Zhenya in a confessional mood, felt his stomach begin to turn. “I can’t imagine you told him the truth.”

Zhenya shrugged philosophically. “What might that be?”

“I should be going,” Sasha said, filled with an urgent sensation, a furious fluttering in his chest, the sound of a howling wind in his ears. “Help me dress.”

Zhenya grinned at him, all his many teeth on display. “No,” he said. “I think you can manage.”

“What have you done?”

Zhenya’s grin didn’t waver. He finished the rest of his drink in perfect silence, only leaning over to pilfer a radish from the salad dish with his fingers before shooing Sasha away.

-

When Nicklas surfaced from the swell of darkness it wasn’t quite a shock to be indoors, but the canopy he found himself staring at was too familiar, a light brocade stretched between dark posts. It looked like Sasha’s bed, remembered from other mornings.

Nicklas could hardly think. Had time passed? How much?

He should turn his head, or perhaps move in some other way.

He tried to roll over and found he couldn’t. Strange.

There was a distant sort of clamour in his mind, perhaps panic, which would be logical, but otherwise the sensation wasn't wholly unpleasant, though his mouth felt very dry. He tried to move again, and this time something about the unresponsiveness of his limbs began to spark a more urgent anger. He found he couldn’t sit up, but finally managed to turn his head, only to discover that he was not only in the bed but, in fact, tied to it.

Well. That certainly provided an explanation.

Nicklas’ eyes slipped closed again, almost against his volition. Memory came back in glutinous drips: a vague notion of bathing, or fighting re-entry to the enormous brass bathtub. Zhenya’s smile. Nicklas would have to kill him, too, probably. Eventually.

He wondered where Sasha was, whether he was out, still, wondering at Nicklas’ absence. He wondered if Sasha had been swept up in the nets yet, couched around the small paths.

Nicklas had just begun trying to turn his thoughts towards escape, forcing his mind towards urgency, when a weight landed beside him, softness of the bed warping down, drawing his body towards the distortion.

Nicklas forced his eyes open.

“Good afternoon,” Sasha said. “How lovely to see you.”

Nicklas thought he might be imaging him, but then Sasha laid a hand across the front of his throat, warm and calloused, and all of Nicklas’ nascent attention came into sharper focus, drawn by the press of his palm. “Hello,” he rasped, feeling the vibration in his own throat, held in by Sasha's fingers.

Sasha smiled gently. “Are you well rested?”

Nicklas could not help but truly consider the question. The drugged stupor he was surfacing from couldn’t truly have been called restful, but his body still felt distant, as though the flesh of it was somehow disconnected from the spirit, and he could not identify the sensation. “I don’t think so.” He doubted rest was the desired effect of whatever abominable poison Zhenya had dosed him with.

Sasha stroked a hand down his chest, tracing shapes across his abdomen with light a, careful touch. He brushed a warm thumb across one of Nicklas’ nipples, pulled taut by the angle of his arm and the way Sasha’s weight was drawing him closer as though by gravity. The contact jolted through him, doing more to reconnect him to his body than any logical urgency. “Unfortunate,” Sasha said, repeating the movement, watching Nicklas’ face the way he had when he had trapped him the second time, a wide grin and a look in his eyes that was too bright somehow, lit up by some fire Nicklas felt he might be beginning to understand. “So. Should I let you go? One last day for you to best me? We can wait, if you feel the, ah— need to recover.”

Nicklas found himself suddenly short of breath, more aware by increments that his release was truly in Sasha’s hands. He thought Sasha might hunt him until they both became so singleminded they may as well be animals. He had seen it once, two elk locked together by the horns until neither could yield. Though an elk was never in its life a predator, and somewhere in the jungle Nicklas had lost the feeling of being prey.

He tested the give of the ropes, finding himself reluctantly impressed by the grace of the knots, and considered the situation. He could escape, given enough time, perhaps. He might have enough chance to kill Sasha, but that felt cheapened somehow, inadequate for what he truly wished to do to him. “I’d prefer it if you didn’t,” he said, carefully. “If it is all the same to you.”

Sasha leaned down, arranging himself alongside Nicklas, propped up on one elbow, the better to continue his exploration, fingers lingering over the fading scrapes from branches and underbrush, the raised redness of insect bites. Despite the fact that he was himself half-clothed, Nicklas felt far more nude in comparison than he ever had encountering him in the wild. “Zhenya has overstepped himself,” Sasha murmured, drawing back the light sheet. “Wouldn't you say?”

“Don’t be too—” Nicklas’ breath hitched as Sasha’s shirt dipped, revealing a living bruise across his chest, “— too hard on him.”

Sasha’s eyes, hanging wandered along with his fingers, made their way back to Nicklas’ face, still just as bright despite the deep blackness of his pupils. “Oh?”

“I can’t fault his execution,” Nicklas admitted. “I did get careless. I think he prefers it when you’re happy.”

Sasha smiled gently at him, but instead of saying anything more, he spread himself across Nicklas’ hips, pinning him down with his weight, all of him filling Nicklas’ vision for such a long moment he wondered whether Sasha might smother him. Then thought, oddly, was not entirely frightening.

Sasha’s hand cupped his cheek, warm and dry, seeming even more huge than he remembered, and then Sasha brushed a kiss across his lips.

Perhaps it was ill-advised to kiss him back.

“I don't suppose this changes anything,” Sasha said, speaking into the corner of his mouth, just where there was a hint of wetness.

“It needn’t,” he managed. “Though I’d prefer it if you untied me.”

“Yes,” Sasha agreed, “I do like to have a fair fight.”

-

Sasha had always been something of a hedonist, though those who truly pursued pleasure to its limits without boundary tended towards early expiration. No, Sasha preferred the joy of satisfaction, and in this instance, he was _very_ well satisfied.

Oh, he had so many questions; how had Nicklas let his guard down? What had prompted him to truly play the game the way Sasha had always hoped someone might?

Faced with Nicklas laid out beside him, pale skin sunburned again and marked with the natural ire of all forests, branches and insects and plants of all kinds determined to be inedible, Sasha’s questions fell beyond words, as such.

The instant he released him, Nicklas attempted to brace a forearm over his throat, and Sasha lost himself in the play of it, letting him tumble them off the edge of the bed and into the floor, boards creaking ominously at the impact.

“Nicky,” Sasha said, when Nicklas landed on top of him, reviving the pain of the lingering bruise across his chest, “there’s no need to be proud.”

Nicklas hesitated, confused, for just long enough for Sasha to roll them over, pressing him flat to the floor by the shoulders. He must have still been feeling the lingering effects of Zhenya’s concoction —one Sasha had experienced on the rare days when Zhenya wanted a day off until he had learned to recognize the lingering whiteness around the rim of glasses— because he just looked up at Sasha with his small mouth slightly open, as though he’d forgotten what he was about to say.

Sasha could feel his heart beating, the movement of his chest as his lungs worked, could feel the tension coiled in Nicklas’ hips as he got ready to throw Sasha off again. “The oil is where we left it,” Sasha murmured, leaning down until he was just beyond the reach of his teeth. “But we should perhaps relocate to the bed.”

Nicklas shifted against him, arousal wholly undisguised, a small furrow between his eyebrows. “No,” he murmured, taking the moment of Sasha’s interested confusion to drag him down by the back of the neck. “It’s too soft.”

Sasha felt full, full to overflowing, heat building beneath his skin, an urgent buzzing like the start of a chase all over again. “As you wish,” he said, finding a scrape to dig at, just before he kissed him again.

-

A fair while later — when Nicklas found himself newly sore and propped against the headboard with Sasha’s heavy weight in his lap, his silvered, leonine head resting on one of his thighs as Nicklas carded a hand through his hair — Nicklas began to think this might begin to require negotiation.

Sasha stirred when Nicklas’ hand stilled. “What?” He asked.

Nicklas chose his words with care. “Should I consider this a respite?”

“If you’d like,” Sasha said, stretching before settling himself back across Nicklas’ lap.

Nicklas resumed his stroking, enjoying the drag of Sasha’s hair against his fingers. It would be so easy to hold him by it. All in good time. “I could have killed you. The first time. In the snare.”

Sasha hummed happily, vibration deep in his chest. He was looking at Nicklas the way he had when Nicklas had trapped him in the pit, a gambit he was particularly proud of. He could have buried him alive. “I knew you were in the tree,” Sasha said, sliding a hand up the bitten skin of Nicklas’ thigh. “You didn’t attack. I was disappointed.” Sasha’s smile widened. “You could have.”

“What now?” Nicklas was becoming distracted, drag of Sasha’s nails on the fresh bruises left by his teeth raising his blood again.

“How did Zhenya get the better of you?” Sasha asked, digging in just a fraction more.

Nicklas forced himself to breathe. “Did he?”

“Keep your secrets, then,” Sasha said magnanimously, “I will just ask him.”

“Will you hunt him for it?”

“Oh, no.” Sasha ceased his stroking. “He’s an indoor creature. It would be far too dull.”

“You underestimate him,” Nicklas admitted, grudgingly.

“Perhaps,” Sasha said, shrugging, the motion of it seismic across Nicklas’ lap. “I suspect he likes you.”

Nicklas, hand still idly resting against Sasha’s skull, took a deliberate grip on his hair. It was surprisingly soft, strands fine and thick, long enough to tangle his fingers in. Nicklas looked down at him and tried to remind himself that this was, at best, a stalemate. Still, it was good to be clean. It was better still to be satisfied, a deep sensation of understanding suffusing him. Sasha was entirely cracked, split down the middle in some fundamental way, driven and dangerous and mad.

Perhaps Nicklas was not so differently ordered. “He doesn’t,” Nicklas said, dragging Sasha closer. “Will you make me a castaway again?”

Sasha gripped him by the hips, a faint play at resistance. “How wasteful,” Sasha said, “I’m not finished with you.”

Nicklas imagined escape, going back to his life; a decent living at sea, and a quiet retirement if the storms were merciful. His mind shied from the possibility of it, everything ordinary sheared at the root by Sasha’s chase. “I might kill you, if you keep me.”

“Such a promise,” Sasha said digging his fingers into the meat of him before he began to work him back to full interest with his mouth. Nicklas had laid aside his objections long ago, but there was no reason for Sasha to know that. It would wholly ruin the game.

-

A Departure

-

Packing took several weeks, during which time Nicklas began to torment Zhenya by suddenly revealing his true skill at chess, culminating in a quantity of ruined glassware and depleted reserves of wine while Sasha revived his correspondence.

Documents began to arrive by airship, the first of which rendered Nicklas nearly speechless with fury as it appeared on the horizon.

“How did they know to come so soon?”

Sasha could see him biting out his words, small teeth clacking together. The little jagged edge of his canine was a place Sasha would very much like to touch, to feel the shape pressing into the sensitive pad of a finger. Ah, he was distracting. “Oh, I radioed for them.”

It was dusk, the rain having just passed, and they were enjoying a nightcap on the verandah in the cool air left in its wake. The airship came into view between two steel-grey clouds, causing Nicklas to stiffen all over like a furious cat.

“You radioed them.”

“You know what a radio is, I hope?”

“I was in the Navy,” Nicklas said, knuckles white around his glass. “You have a radio here.”

“A Navy man!” Sasha conjured an image of him in a uniform, unfortunately distracting himself again. “Do tell.”

Nicklas fixed his eyes on the approaching ship, set his jaw, and poured the remainder of his drink directly into Sasha’s lap, setting the glass down on the stain before he got up and left.

Sasha, soaked in whiskey, laughed himself hoarse, suffused with wellbeing and delighted to have perturbed him yet again. He was making quite a habit of launching drinks.

The ship was some distance away yet. Sasha went to find him, wanting to watch him in his anger.

He found Nicklas breaking down the door to his study with a series of deliberate kicks to the wood near the doorknob, planks softened just enough by sea air that he was gaining some headway.

“It's not locked,” Sasha pointed out.

“I know,” Nicklas said. He gave it one last powerful blow with his heel and it splintered open, just in time for Zhenya to appear at the end of the hall to take in the show.

“Ship’s arriving,” he said, in English, the better, Sasha thought, to rile Nicklas up.

Nicklas stepped over the pile of splinters he'd made and began to methodically overturn Sasha's affairs, finally yanking open the doors to the radio cabinet to see the working array, cursing at such length and volume that Sasha could barely hear Zhenya’s laughter behind him.

For a moment Sasha thought Nicklas might smash the radio too, but all he did was sit down in front of it, examining its functions with expert fingers before he slumped forward and put his head in his hands.

“You broke him at last,” Zhenya said. “Will he recover?”

“All this time,” Nicklas said finally, “you've had a radio.”

“Yes,” Sasha confirmed happily. “It's quite a beautiful device, I think.”

Nicklas moaned in outrage.

Sasha crept towards him, finally laying a hand on his back, sliding up the back of his neck to toy with the smooth curls falling loose above his shoulders. “Who would you have called?”

Nicklas relaxed beneath his palm, beginning to laugh quietly. “I'm not sure,” he admitted. “Would I have gotten through to anyone?”

“I can't say,” Sasha reassured him. “You are very resourceful.”

Zhenya made a disgusted noise and turned to go, spectacle diverging from his tastes. Sasha would miss him, probably.

“Will you come see the ship?” Sasha asked, when Zhenya had gone, and Nicklas’ bare nape under his palm was beginning to be a greater temptation. “They are quite impressive, though I’d advise against smoking near the balloons.”

“If you’ve been hiding tobacco from me also I will remove your liver,” Nicklas mumbled, shoulders lowering as Sasha pressed his knuckles into the ridge of his spine. The body was so delicate, all these little pieces, mysteriously connected, making a whole. Sasha might very well dismantle him one day, if Nicklas didn’t get to him first. The thought was, in its way, comforting. Sasha’s supremacy over man and beast aside, knowing that at any time he might wake up to find Nicklas garrotting him again felt right in some ineffable way, as though he had been destined to reach this point, his hand on the back of a neck he truly was not ready to snap.

Nicklas stirred. “Are you thinking about breaking my neck?” He asked. “You’ll have to use both hands.”

Sasha rested both hands on his shoulders, kneading at the heavy muscle. “Like this?”

“Not even slightly,” Nicklas said with perfect derision, leaning into the touch.

-

Sasha had been a working man, before Ted had decided to nurture his talents. He had not entirely forgotten the art, though putting his affairs in order did require more paperwork than he ever remembered having to do when living by his rifle.

Still, the principle was not wholly different; their first contract arrived with the second ship, after most of Sasha’s heavier items not integral to the house had been sent ahead.

Nicklas slit it open with his boot knife, spreading it between them over the kitchen table where Sasha had found him deep in some silent argument with Zhenya, mediated through the relative sharpness of each of their knives, whetstone between them on the wood. “It’s in North America. Convenient.”

“Ah, Ted,” Sasha said fondly. “He still does me favours.”

“When you are leaving?” Zhenya asked, weariness in his voice, in Sasha’s opinion, slightly too affected.

“Our dear friend Mr.—” He glanced over Nicklas’ shoulder. “—Cherry should not live beyond autumn. So we will have to be going soon.”

“Please do,” Zhenya said, holding to English for Nicklas’ benefit. “You sicken me.”

“You always look sick,” Nicklas observed, standing up so Sasha could have his seat. “I’m going for a walk.”

Sasha was unsure why he was announcing himself until it was just he and Zhenya left in the kitchen, the contract curling in the humidity. Zhenya glared at him and resumed his work, all the kitchen knives Nicklas had dented and maimed in his projects arrayed around him to be salvaged.

“You’ll have to learn how to behave for company,” Sasha said, retrieving the nearest one and setting its point in the wood, spinning it between two fingers by the handle. “Should you have any.”

“After years of you,” Zhenya countered, “if I never see another soul I will be delighted.”

 “Are you certain you won’t come with us? You could grow a moustache. Live under an assumed name.”

“And leave all this to ruin?” Zhenya raised an eyebrow at the kitchen, wood everywhere beginning to warp, floor bowing downward in places with the subsidence of the house into the soft ground beneath it.

“Then I’ll send you a dog,” Sasha said, setting the knife down. “Or perhaps one last ship, just in case.”

“You’ll be back,” Zhenya informed him, his tone unavoidably doom laden. “You’ll want to add to your trophies.”

Sasha thought of Nicklas’ strange face and imagined admiring his small mandible occasionally, picking it up in his hands. “Perhaps. Or maybe it will be Nicklas.”

“Never mind,” Zhenya said. “Send me a dog.”

-

Nicklas could not be said to have fond memories of the sitting room, but nevertheless, that was where he found himself on the evening of their departure.

Zhenya had packed him a trunk, so he had very little to carry.

Having arrived by shipwreck, Nicklas had very little in the way of earthly possessions. Perhaps he ought to go back to Sweden at some point, but he had likely been thought drowned now for quite some time.

He paced to the centre of the deep carpet, remembering its musty, salted smell, the pool of water he had dripped onto it. The vantage from which he had first seen Sasha, peering down at him in the firelight. He was still standing there when Sasha found him.

He had a small misting of rain in his hair, excitement emanating from him as he stalked across the room. “Pilot says we should go now, or the rain will close us in,” he said, laying a hand over Nicklas’ cheek, palm cool and damp.

“One moment,” Nicklas asked. “Stay there.”

He left Sasha on the woven blue and red of the carpet and went to sit in the chair by the fireplace, examining the angles. “Lie down.”

Sasha smiled at him, the place where his tooth was missing dark and obvious, his hands anchored on his hips. “Trying to decide how you’d hunt me?”

“I’ve already hunted you.”

Sasha bowed from the waist, not quite elegant and entirely what he always was; big, easy in his body, eloquent in its use. “And now we have different game.”

Nicklas propped his chin on one fist, considering the future. He had never been very attached to civilian life. He supposed one more change in career would be tolerable.

He pushed himself to his feet and joined Sasha, letting him link their arms together. In any case, if on the journey Nicklas reconsidered, he could always throw Sasha overboard. Nicklas imagined it, the way his face would look, the long drop to the water, and smiled.

“That’s the spirit,” Sasha said. “Shall we go?”

**Author's Note:**

> If you’re here you either clicked down or you read the whole thing in which case welcome and I’m sorry. 
> 
> Yes, this is a gay remix of The Most Dangerous Game. No, you don’t need to read that first. 
> 
> WARNINGS FOR: Attempted murder! Sexual coercion! Hunting humans for sport! Mangling a piano! Other stuff probably! Enjoy!
> 
> Comments preserve my fragile self esteem!


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